Help Inside the Stormcage
by Terapsina
Summary: "The TARDIS brought us here for a reason. The Doctor needs help, if we're finding that help inside a space prison then we're breaking into a space prison."


**Disclaimer** : Not mine. I'm not getting any money.

 **AN** : This fic is a response to a prompt given to me by the very nice amandarosewater who wasked for 11. "We could get arrested for this."

I also kinda wrote it as a birthday present for myself (finished it three days late but I'm counting it).

*o0O0o*  
* **Help Inside the Stormcage** *  
*o0O0o*

"We could get arrested for this." Graham says, sounding worried.

"Then it's a good thing we're already inside a prison isn't it?" Yaz whispers and bends to look around the corner to see if they've finally come across a cell block. "The TARDIS brought us here for a reason. The Doctor needs help, if we're finding that help inside a space prison then we're breaking into a space prison."

It's not that she doesn't feel weird about this. She does. She wanted to become a police officer with the idea that she'd sometimes _arrest_ people not break them out. But the Doctor is their friend and she's about to be put on trial for saving a planet so… desperate times.

"We don't even know who we're looking for though." Ryan says, not unreasonably, Yaz has to admit.

They'd found themselves here rather on accident while trying to get the TARDIS to maybe bring them directly to the Doctor. The ship did take off but instead of the holding cells of the planet they'd been on, the first thing they'd seen upon exiting the TARDIS was a sign proclaiming this to be level 14 of the Stormcage Containment Facility.

The entire level has been as quiet as a grave. It's rather creepy. No guards. No cells so far. Just a labyrinth of corridors.

And no alarms. Which is probably the most eerie part. She'd have thought they'd have tripped something by now. But the only sound around them is three sets of nervous footsteps and their own breathing.

She stops in place when there echoes a sound like static electricity against metal but there's no other sounds following it and she shakes off the feeling. Uncertain if she'd imagined it she picks up their pace.

"We'll figure it out." Yaz says.

"If we ever find someone at all." Ryan says under his breath, eyes running across the walls like he'd heard something too.

"Well you've found _me_." Says a woman's voice from behind them and Yaz almost trips over her feet with how quickly she turns around, feeling like her heart has just jumped outside her chest.

Graham curses on her other side.

"Who are you?" Asks Ryan, being the first of them to recover.

"River Song." The woman says, leaning against the wall and looking at them with shrewd, curious eyes and a smirk. She's wearing a maroon jacket and high waisted breeches with a thigh holster that's holding what she'd guess is some sort of energy weapon. The overall impression is very 'fashionable space pirate'. "Wasn't expecting visitors today though. However did you get in?"

"Umm." Ryan starts uncertainly from her left and then pokes Yaz in the side, seeming to want to pass the explanation to her. Yaz glares at him.

"The TARDIS brought us here?" Yaz tries after a moment of indecision. If this River Song is the one who's supposed to help them then that should be enough of an explanation. And if she's not, then it shouldn't give too much away.

"Where's the Doctor?" River says at once straightening in place. The careless air around her vanishing into nothing and leaving behind the intensity of someone far more dangerous than you'd guess by first looking at her. Yaz finds her hand itching for her police issue baton. It's not that she thinks they're abut to be attacked but there's a sudden feeling of being in the sights of a lion and she doesn't like it.

She ruthlessly squashes the feeling. She's not on the job right now and they're there with a purpose. Probably. TARDIS didn't exactly give them directions.

Yaz exchanges a look with Ryan and Graham, a silent question running between them about whether or not to trust a woman they know basically nothing about. Except that she's presumably either a prisoner or a prison guard.

And though they didn't come across her from the other side of prison bars, her look just doesn't scream 'guard'.

Plus this might explain why there aren't any screaming and flashing alarms. If River has disabled them, there wouldn't be any.

"She needs help." Graham says finally.

"What kind of help?" River asks, her eyes flicking over them, assessing them in a way that Yaz has seen from her grandpa.

Her grandfather was a war veteran.

"We saved a planet but the Doctor kind of had to blow up an evil statue, except it was apparently some kind of sacred monument and now they've put her on trial, and if she loses they're going to execute her." Ryan adds, the whole thing coming out in one long string of a rushed sentence.

"And they won't let us testify on her behalf because we're not family." Yaz says. She's still furious about that part, well she's furious about the whole thing but that part especially.

She understands an alien culture having different legal rules than the ones she's used to. But not allowing for witnesses that aren't legally tied to to the accused just doesn't make sense to Yaz.

"I see!" River says, voice going cold and eyes narrowing.

"Will you help her?" Yaz asks, though more because she feels like she has to instead of because she still doubts the answer.

The Doctor is clearly very important to River.

"Oh they won't be touching a hair on my wife's head." River says and turns around, stalking back the way Yaz, Ryan and Graham had come from.

* * *

Coming back from her short treasure hunt in the Sylla asteroid fields to the sight of the Doctor's new friends wandering around Stormcage without her wife, was admittedly a bit of a bad surprise.

She scrolls through the recent travel history by the TARDIS console and observes them from the corner of her eye.

"When you said you're the Doctor's wife..." Yaz finally asks her, curiosity clearly getting the better of her.

"Didn't mention me did she? Oh they do tend to do that, keeps everything ever so close to their chest, bless." River says, throwing a fond smile over her shoulder and then going back to narrowing in on the best place to land the TARDIS.

"No. I mean she did. Kind of. It's just..." Yaz says and then falls silent, mouth still open like she knows how to finish the thought but doesn't quite have the nerve. River grimaces a bit sadly, face turned away from them.

"She said she lost her family." Graham finishes for Yaz. "So how are you-"

"Spoilers." River chides them, though she knows they're still too new to know the rules.

"What?" Ryan asks.

"Time travel makes things a bit complicated." River says, looks to her left and rolls her eyes as she takes the brakes off the TARDIS, before putting in the coordinates that will take them to the Doctor. "Whatever's in my future, it hasn't happened yet."

"So the TARDIS wasn't supposed to bring us to you?" Yaz asks, a new note of worry entering her voice.

"Oh no," River assures them while pulling the lever that flings them into hyperspace. "if she brought you to me then I'm supposed to be here."

She runs her eyes over the information TARDIS is showing her on the quantum screen of the console, and seeing nothing out of order she finally takes a step back to turn around to face Yaz, Ryan and Graham fully.

"Now." She says and puts on a smile she hopes hides her worry. "Tell me what kind of trouble my wife has gotten into now!"

* * *

The Doctor paces from one side of the cell to the other, fingers twitching once in a while with the urge to go for her confiscated sonic screwdriver.

She doesn't notice the doors sliding open behind her, her first hint of a visitor is the voice.

A voice that makes both her hearts jump inside her chest.

"Blowing up a statue of their Saint? That sounds like something I would do, Sweetie." River says while the Doctor stands frozen in the middle of the room, her eyes squeezed closed and nails digging little half-moons into the skin of her palms.

"It was a Weeping Angel." The Doctor chokes out past the ball of yarn stuck in her chest.

"So your friends informed me. Not a great defense though, telling the Battori that their Saint was a monster." River says, a hint of amusement in her voice. "I'm sure that went over splendidly."

"Are my friends-" The Doctor starts, swinging around to face River.

"They're perfectly alright. Landed the TARDIS right on my front lawn. So to speak." River says.

She's beautiful. But her eyes are younger than the last time the Doctor saw them and some little hope she didn't think she was still carrying dies inside her. She still hates the Library, she thinks she probably always will.

"When are you?" The Doctor asks, knows her lines.

"Oh, Byzantium wasn't that long ago." River tells him. "Mother was so young. You though-"

"I'm... older." The Doctor tells her.

"I can see that. The face-"

"Yes, that, what do you think?" The Doctor says, a forced cheer with some real curiosity entering her voice.

"Oh, I've seen the face before, my love." River says and then leans in to whisper into her ear. "Seen the body too."

"You have?" The Doctor asks, hearts racing and a different hope blooming bright under the light of those words.

"I have indeed." River says, a little mischievous smirk a hair's width away from the Doctor's face.

"Isn't that a spoiler?" The Doctor asks, her skin already tingling with ghost sensations despite the fact River has yet to even touch her.

"One won't kill us." River says and the Doctor leans the rest of the way up to kiss her. Some tiny corner of her mind notes with a small wave of irritation that she's never before had to stand on her toes to kiss her wife.

Most of her mind however goes warm and golden as soon as their lips touch.

*o0O0o*

 **AN2** : So... I'm really hoping you liked this as much as you seem to have liked my previous 2 fics and thank you for your nice responses for them btw, it really put me in so great a mood that I ended up writing way more than I'm usually inspired to.


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